I am so grateful that even though I will not be here this Sunday (May 23rd) I have people I can count on to step in and provide a Worship service! I want to thank Matt Lacy for providing leadership to our team while I am away!
This week the Church will be singing a lot about surrendering ourselves to God’s Will, and to accept the freedom and love that is offered us through Christ Jesus our Lord! I am also excited that we are introducing a new song that our very own Matt Lacy wrote, called We are Free Forever! I have been praying for some time now to have a song writer team/individual who will write songs specifically for our Church family, and I love to see and hear it come to fruition!
Here is the list of songs for this week (May 23rd) that we will be singing at Eagleville Bible Church:
- We Are Free Forever,
- Gal 5:1,
- John 8:32,
- Rom 6:17-18,
- 1 John 5:1-5,
- Your Love Never Fails,
- Eph 3:16-19,
- 1 Cor 13:4-8(a),
- Heb 13:8,
- Rom 8:28,
- Lead Me to the Cross,
- Ps 46:10,
- Rom 5:8,
- John 19:16-18,
- Phil 3:8,
- You Say,
- Jude 1:24,
- 2 Cor 11:9-10,
- 1 Cor 12:12-26,
- 1 Cor 3:23,
- Zeph 3:17,
- Lay Me Down,
- Rom 12:1,
- 1 Cor 3:23,
- 2 Cor 6:13,
- 2 Cor 4:6,
- Heb 12:2, along with Luke 22:42,
Devotional Thought
Oh how wonderful freedom is! I just wanted to remind myself and everyone reading this right now that if we are “In Christ” we have been made free by His submission to death on the Cross! Galatians 5:1 tells us that the very reason Christ died is to set us free!!
So, the logical question would be, “What did He set us free from?”. We find a statement over in Romans chapter 6 that tells us that the one who has died has been freed from sin. Sin is the tyrannical ruler we are set free from when we come into a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ! It is the power, penalty, and presence of sin in our life that we can be freed from when we receive the cleansing power of Christ into our lives! It is His mercy and grace that removes the chains that were once shackled onto us, holding us in bondage to doing all that it commanded. Jesus is the victor over sin and death! He is the One that holds the key to it, and He is the One that provides for us who believe in His Name for Salvation the access needed to walking freed from the fear of sin and death!
My good friend, Matt Lacy, has written a song (it is the first song we are singing this Sunday at Eagleville Bible Church!) called We are Free Forever. This song reminds us that it is a joyful declaration to say that we have been made free, and we should be shouting it from the tops of our voices! Why, because there is a whole world of people that are in bondage to sin and its grip on their lives and when they see and hear of people receiving freedom through Christ it will give them hope and confidence to receive the Lord for themselves! Our testimonies work to provide people hope in their hopelessness, and direction for their aimlessness.
Paul said that he is glad for his chains because they are working to advance the Gospel of Christ, well how much more will the breaking off of those chains work towards that same mission when we tell others of the freedom that has taken place in our lives when we accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior!! “We are free forever, free forever, Jesus came to make a way for us.” is the first line of the chorus of this song, and then it ends by saying, “take these chains and turn them into dust.”! What a great declaration of praise into a prayer for Christ to do what only He is able to do – deliver us from the power of sin!
What is the key that unlocks us from sin’s shackles? Love! Among other things (like; grace, mercy, kindness, discipline, self-control, etc.), I believe that the Scriptures reveal a mystery of how God breaks the power of sin in our lives. It shows us a better way – love.
1 Cor 13:13 tells us that “there is faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Love is the most powerful change agent at work in our universe right now! Why, because it fills us right at the point where sin is trying to reach – our passions and desires. When we can look to love, especially God’s love, to provide for us the security, hope, pleasure, and fulfillment our soul needs then I believe we will stop looking for those areas of our lives to be filled by sinful things like; drugs, sex, idols, etc. It is love that opens our eyes to relationship with God, and once we have relationship with Him then we change our desires (actually, He changes the desires in us to be more Christ-like!) and seek to please our Savior. The more we grow in this relationship, the more we act in accordance to His will, and the less we seek to do sinful things that are rooted in selfishness and self-seeking pleasures. We start to say, “Your will be done”, with joy in our hearts!
I believe that we can tell how much God’s love has been activated in our lives by the level of joy we feel when we are acting in accordance with God’s will, or commandments! The reason I believe this is because when we understand the Father’s heart toward us we will then see His commands as protection and love, not as burdensome and restricting. We will follow His ways, trust in Him more, and seek to please him the more we grasp His love. I think this is why the Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians that he desires that they are rooted and established in the love of God, that they might comprehend the height, depth, breadth, and width of His unfailing love! Then again to the Corinthians he tells them that he wants to show them the most excellent way to live, and gives one of the best descriptions we have of what love, true Godly love, looks like in practice (See 1 Cor 13:4-8) – with the crescendo being, “Love never fails!”
It is when we know what the Father has done for us, and our identity in Him, that we will really understand our freedom and life made available to us! It is like someone who has lived their whole lives as servants to peasants not knowing that they have full rights and privileges as royalty. While being a servant they do not enjoy the freedoms that they could if they took their rightful place in the royal palace because they do not know they are royalty. Once their royalty has been discovered though, now they can abandon those old clothes and lifestyle of tyranny, always taking direction from a master only concerned about himself, and can now have freedom to live a life that brings honor to their lineage and name! While they are enjoying those freedoms and the life of royalty, there is no doubt that they would have constant reminders of who they are, “Hello Prince so and so”, “Good morning, Princess so and so”, “You look marvelous Queen so and so”, and so on. Even on days that they did not feel like royalty, everyone around them (especially those other members of the royal family) would remind them of it. I love the song, You Say, simply because it does just that! It reminds us of the identity we have in Christ and what He speaks over us constantly; “You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing, You say I am strong when I think I am weak, You say I am held when I have fallen short, When I feel I don’t belong You say I am Yours!” It is the love of the Father that tells us that (See 1 John 3:1-2) we are His children – children of the Royal Heavenly family! Adopted into the Kingdom of God by the agency of grace provided in Christ Jesus! Hallelujah!!
So, when you are tempted to forget the freedom that you have in Christ because of the unfailing love that was shown through His death, burial, and resurrection, please remember that when you made your way to the Cross and received forgiveness of your sins through belief and repentance our God adopted you and called you His child forever! He has purchased your inheritance into His Kingdom, and desires for you to walk in the abundant life of freedom that is yours in Christ. When we open our hearts to this understanding and lay ourselves down in order to receive more of Him, that is when we will truly appreciate the level of wholeness and freedom that is ours in Christ! Surrender to Him and watch how He transforms the tyranny of sin into the grace of freedom!
I pray that you are encouraged and inspired to be transformed each day by the grace of Christ and the love of the Father as you submit to His direction through the Holy Spirit saying, “O God, I want Your Will and Your way to direct my life!”. God bless you!